


Where the Ocean meets the Sky

by ProwlingThunder



Series: The Everlasting List of Shenanigans [207]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: F/M, Grief/Mourning, Post-Game, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-28
Updated: 2018-02-28
Packaged: 2019-03-25 01:27:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13823571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProwlingThunder/pseuds/ProwlingThunder
Summary: He thinks they're silver, like the moon on the ocean, but they could be black like the depths of the sea, save for pearl handles her grandmama traded a dragon for.





	Where the Ocean meets the Sky

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Momokitty](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Momokitty/gifts).



> I'm sorry but I'm not sorry?
> 
> 100+ Words Meme  
> Two and a Number: Ignis and ghost of dead girlfriend (FFXV) [#45: Two Guns]
> 
> Title from [_Song of the Sea_  by Nolween Leroy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uen59x1NBRs)

There was a certain sort of emptiness in the house that he couldn't, wouldn't, fill. Maybe he would try, in years to come, but the ones Ignis had expected to live life after Dawn with were gone, aside from memory and tributes, little shrines he had built to honor the lost.

Noctis (his king, his brother, his friend) gone, bringing back sunlight Ignis could scarcely see. He had lied to him when he said he should be able to differentiate the sun's rise from the lack of it by sight; he'd done it by touch, sensing the warmth of something he hadn't felt in years kiss his skin again. There was a strange scent that touched Eos, whenever the sun rose-- had, since well before the Night. He simply..

He had forgotten, that was all. He made a point to ask for large windows, worked hard to earn them, despite that he couldn't see what existed beyond them. As long as it didn't block the sun, he couldn't care less what was outside of them. Gladiolus (another who was gone, now, not deceased but gone still) had promised the view wasn't awful, which Ignis supposed would have to be enough.

Sunrise every day, and a view that wasn't terrible.

He worked with his hands when he could. There was still need for a knifeman's work, still need for cooks who could produce something edible out of so little, and so he found himself always busy, never lingering too long to think, but there were more things that he could do now, too. Bones of garula and other beasts were hauled in (everything the survivors had, now, they had to use. Who knew what else they might find tomorrow, if they found anything at all?) and rusted metal of cars from the streets of Insomnia, there was always  _ something. _

There was a fireplace, in his home, with a half-rotten mantle, and Ignis bargained his skills away for a garula's rib and worked in the unnerving quiet of the night when he couldn't sleep, remembering the sensation of softer skin brushing his own as thin fingers showed his own how to find the etchings, how to follow them with a knife, the care and way to hold it to repeat each stroke a little deeper.

It was easier to learn how to live life by remembering one who had lived, he supposed, even if his hands were not nearly as steadied by the memories.

He etched the garula's rib, recalling whirls and divots. Remembered the shape of the Leviathan under his thumb, as she traced the outline for him carefully, telling the story of how a grandmother had bargained with a dragon for his pearl  _ ("Well," _ Sidonia admitted,  _ "We were ocean-people, and the official story is with gold. But  _ I _ always heard," _ Sidonia told him, voice dropping to a whisper as she leaned in, setting aside tools of their trades, and Ignis' skin was warmed by touch and set aflame,  _ "That grandmama had a pearl of her own to trade.") _ and how it had been etched as a gift, calling for divine protection, and then eventually set into her father's handguns. He didn't think his own etchings were going to be as good, but, well. It was going to replace dry-rotted wood, and he was blind. It didn't have to be perfect.

(Yes it did.)

After the mantelpiece, he traded for ivory, and carved a box. Dawn meant there was too much time on his hands, and not enough time to sleep.

He plants flowers, eventually, remembering raised flesh where skin was flawed in a way he hadn't understood, trying to see her in her glory. Planting a garden is tainted by the sense of her showing his fingers the outlines of flowers and waves over her flesh, where scarification proved her skill, where it showed her abilities and virtues.  _ ("You're injured,"  _ he says, one hour of the ever-Night, the scent of blood too present, and Sidonia laughed at him, pressed his fingers beneath her collarbone, where the bandages began.  _ "Just getting a new tattoo. I think you'll like this one.") _

In the mantle he worked the Astrals, near as he could. He worked circles and triangles in the sun, crescents in the moon, gently rolling water and cresting waves. The mantle is a memory, to remember the dead for whom he has nothing else. It's supposed to tell a story.

In the box he decorates with nothing. He folds the remains of a leather vest and a threadbare coeurl-rosette shirt as a bed inside it, and rests two cold shapes of metal inside them.

He thinks they're silver, like the moon on the ocean, but they could be black like the depths of the sea, save for pearl handles her grandmama traded a dragon for.

The first few years of darkness, all his brothers gone, she had saved his life. Ignis suspected now that she might approve of the one he was building for them, though it must be just him and the ghost of her now.


End file.
